


Marks

by Faal



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bottom Erwin Week 2017, Bruises/Markings/Bites, Kisses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10528599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faal/pseuds/Faal
Summary: It started out as gentle kisses, feather-like touches of lips to bruised skin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> <3

It started out as gentle kisses, feather-like touches of lips to bruised skin. A brush of hardened velvet on green and yellow and blue and purple. Thin, pale softness against hair-wide marks made by who-know-whats. It started out as little tellings of support, of companionship, breakings in the line of moments of hurt and rushing. Small as they may have been, they were small signals of comfort, making subtle splotches of warm spread in them. Using that break they created a small bubble of each other, stopping for a glance, until grey met blue and they could move on.  
Levi started them to show Erwin he is with him, deep in one night, in the hushed silence of a half-open room in a half-ruin of a house on a mission. The noble whose residence they were using was gone long ago, probably getting fat in the safety of Sina, probably just a bunch of bones vomited up by a titan somewhere behind or over Wall Maria. It was a rough day, as much as every one of them, surveying the area what has once been humanity’s. Levi took one of Erwin’s hands, lifting it. His eyes met Erwin’s gaze for a moment, as if asking for permission, before he placed a kiss on the dark shades of the man’s wrist, a reminder of a rough meeting with a long abandoned house’s wall. It was nothing more than a quick touch of skin on skin, shorter than a heartbeat, subtler than the touch of wind. Their eyes met again as Levi lowered Erwin’s hand, then the Captain lowered that too, as he let go. He didn’t apologize, he didn’t try to step back. They have done much more and much better and worse to each other. There wasn’t any need for that: but it still felt appropriate, like it was something what may or may not crossed a border. There was an invisible layer of uncertainty in Levi’s posture, in the way he forcibly held down his shoulders, kept his breathing even. But then Erwin smiled, an exhausted, small stretch, his eyes, a sad blue from all the burden of the mission, of the leading, lightening with a touch of warm. Levi looked up just in time to catch it. His features softened: it was a smile, anyone who knew him would have swore.  
The second time was between two missions, a chaste nudge of lips wet from water and spit to bruised knuckles. The Commander hurt them while supervising training, stepping in to prevent a cadet nearly smashing herself on a tree. Levi masked the warmth in him with reminding Erwin how much of a clumsy idiot he is, only frowning as a response when the man’s smile just grew wider.  
The third was after the next mission: the whole Survey Corps returning exhausted and desperate for rest and oblivion, mourning for more than a third of their comrades. The trip from the gate to the barracks taken a fresh toll on everyone, even though every one of them was already on the edge. The people of the town rushed out at the ringing of the bells, gathered to meet them. They were the people they wowed to fight for, and none of the soldiers could decide if their words - the sounds of hurt, of realization, the cries of anger and vengeance - or the impacts from hurled stones and bits of wood and sometimes even shards of food hurt more. So they kept silent, locking their despair. The veterans, who saw this too many times, kept silent too. Erwin kept silent too, as he was cursed as a monster, as he was blamed and was wished to die. Levi kept silent too, as he held his tired-rigid posture on his horse, as he led her into the stables and cleaned and fed her, as he went to the Erwin’s office instead of his own room, with a bowl of water and a clean white stripe of clothe and wordlessly stood beside the Commander to clean the wound under his eye, a bruised cut formed by a broken mother’s stone. He cleaned it with small, soft movements, careful about the way the man’s face flinched at the contact. And then, before he put the bowl away, the water now dull with grime and blood, he pressed a kiss to the wound. It was nothing short of the others before: he pressed close, strong, the plumpness of thin lips spreading, sucking the last drops of moisture off. They could count the heartbeats in the quiet of the room, in the warm space between their bodies, Levi’s eyes closed under a deep frown, Erwin’s face unflinching despite the ache radiating from the little wound, but blue eyes searching out the other all the same. They didn’t say anything as Levi walked away, but both felt the concern and the gratitude present between and around them.  
And slowly, Erwin gotten used to it. Little touches of those lips to bruised, wounded skin. Sometimes over something insignificant, something he didn’t even know where he got, sometimes over wounds aching more than they were supposed to. He felt grateful, for the things they meant, for the warmth they brought every time, despite how the small ritual became a routine after a while. And as time went, it got natural. Levi’s tentativeness dissolved, drop by drop, with each bruise, with each kiss, and while they weren’t always that much of a weight on Erwin’s skin, as time went, the kisses gained a physical presence.  
Chasteness grew rearer and rearer as both of their need for reassurance grew. And how did it grew. They were rats caged behind walls: Humanity in a place small enough to make them animals. The tension grew as the supplies for survival diminished, vanishing like sand running through their fingers. And everyone needed to make sacrifices to feed the nobles behind Wall Sina, to keep them well and healthy, to give the pigs what they demanded. As a part of the military they still had more than hundreds and hundreds of people: more than nothing. As being the Survey Corps, they were the first to receive orders to give up on supplies, to lessen the rations, or simply to not to receive them. As being the Survey Corps, they were the first to give up their rations for the people who have lost everything.  
And it still wasn’t enough. As the Survey Corps they were the tool for the solution too. They were the ones to get the opportunity, to be able to give the chance to Humanity’s most wretched to get revenge on their lost lives, on their loved ones’ lost lives. They got the privilege to lead Wall Maria’s people to a fight against the titans, they got the chance to lead them to victory.  
After they returned, still alive but feeling like they shouldn’t be, like they should be out there with the rest, like they would deserve much worse, but at the same time grateful, Erwin and Levi fell to bed together. It wasn’t about appearances anymore. That part of work, just as the papers waiting to be filled with casualties, was left behind them, in their offices’, on the corridors, in the meeting rooms. If anyone saw them, they hadn’t cared. Most of the senior soldiers of the Corps had their assumptions about their relationship, and not one of them felt the need to speak up against it.  
They laid there, skin still raw and red from the rub of the sponge, their minds too restless to give in to the exhaustion. Levi sat up just after a minute, twisting to look at Erwin. His grey orbs took in his bare torso, white from hiding under those dress shirts, striped and marked from the maneuver gear and from the fighting. He let it wander, straying to the tanned hands, littered with cuts and bruises enough to lose count too soon, to the blond hair, wetting the pillow with the water from their bath - more practical and about distraction than anything -, even to the long legs, hidden under white sheets. But not to the face. Levi wasn’t ready to look into Erwin’s face, to see the same emotions he knew were reflected on his own. He wasn’t ready to face those, to give a name to them. So he let his eyes wander, again and again. Then to slide down, from dark-golden locks to those big hands again.  
Levi took one of them, the one further away from him, slipping his so much smaller, white ones under the big palm and lifting it. The gesture brought out a feeling of déjá vu, the times they’ve done this lining up behind them in the shadows. He placed a kiss on one of the bruises, covering several others in the process too. Just a second of strong press of lips. And then again, on another bruise. Then again, another one, then again and again and again. He littered his Commander’s, his lover’s hand with kisses, grounding weights for eternal heartbeats, growing stronger as he clutched the hand in his, not wanting to let go. He denied that he ever doubted Erwin would stay with him, that he would stay alive.  
It was so uncharacteristically emotional for Levi that the man hadn’t dared to say a word. For several seconds he just stared, sky-blue eyes wide. Then warmness flooded him, mixing with the desperate fear for Levi’s life he had buried so deep in himself. His other hand came up, sliding through black silk locks, smoothing touches against his lover’s scalp, letting it fit into his palm as Levi twisted more, torso turning to reach the other’s wrist, his forearm, the muscles above that. He covered them, pressing on to the bruises and cuts he could reach - too much and not enough kisses for all of them.The Captain pulled his legs up to the bed too, nearly crawling on top of his Commander. There wasn’t anything overly sexual about it: it was an act of seeking and giving comfort.  
It wasn’t until Levi reached Erwin’s neck - a cut, positioned perfectly over the man’s pulse, and Levi let himself linger on it longer than any else before, soft lips flattening on, around it. It was hard, he was pressing in too much, and both knew it, and neither of them craved to change it. Levi let himself suck the skin, almost between his teeth, let himself suck a bruise on the wounded skin. Erwin’s face flinched, this time from more than just pain, his free hand sliding down to rest on Levi’s back, on his neck, just above his shoulders, crushing the smaller male into himself with enough force to show them both that they have the here and now.  
It didn’t take long until Levi was sucking on another cut on Erwin’s lips, a different kind of heat spreading in the space around them, their free hand roaming over each other’s bodies - the other pair still lying intervened next to them, fingers clutched. 

It was something they never really talked about. Most of their relationship was like this: they didn’t have the luxury to have ordinary couple’s problems, to worry about who went where with who, about who did and didn’t do the dishes. They were glad to pass out next to each other. Levi was glad (even if he wished it to hell and didn’t hesitate to voice this) if he could accompany Erwin to Sina as the Commander flirted his way into the noblewomen’s purses, charming off every possible piece support from everyone who would stop to talk to him. He was glad if he could quietly clean the man’s office while he did that never ebbing amount of paperwork. And Erwin was glad he could drag Levi with himself to Sina and spend a night with him in a hotel room too plain for the nobles but still luxurious to them after some of the things they’ve lived through, if he could do his work with the distracting sound of a brush on his floors from the background. He was glad if he could stop for a moment by the window to watch Levi scare the new recruits to tears, was glad if he could find a few dozen minutes to go down to the mess hall to sit down next to his Captain and eat with his soldiers.  
Neither of them spoke of the way their relationship was built on little attentivenesses, about how Levi brought nearly cold food to Erwin’s desk after he skipped another meal, about how Erwin draped a blanket over Levi - not daring to move him in fear of disturbing this rarity - when the man finally fallen asleep in a chair. How they took their turns to be strong for the other, how they made the other let go of everything, of responsibilities and fears and postures. And just like that, neither of them spoke about how Levi climbed into Erwin’s lap, pinning the man beneath himself as he leaned down to kiss at the the bruises and cuts and little wounds that had came with being in the military. He painted them blue and purple, sucking the blood to the surface until no one could tell what was his doing and what came from the rough edges of the world.  
He never touched the big wounds like this. Sometimes he brushed chaste kisses to them, careful about the way the Commander would shy away from the contact for an invisible minute as the burning intensified, but never made an attempt to mark them the same way as he did with the others. It became something reserved for more of an emotional comfort than a physical one, stronger in the former than anything in the latter could have been. Erwin attended meetings and went to missions with the tingling feeling of rough cloth scraping against sensitive skin, the red and blue and yellow reminding him with the best kinds of discomfort of the other man. He learned to tune it out when needed, the feeling becoming a naturality, bending in with the scent of sweat, the press of muscles, the stain of the maneuver gear’s straps, just to come back when he had the time to care about himself, after the fear and death and all of the adrenalin.  
Over the years they learned to hide it better. Levi, though grumbling about how he had no shits to give about the ass-faced leaders of the military and the country, limited imprinting himself to the parts of Erwin’s body they could not hide under the uniform. And Erwin, however hard it was at first to even notice the pattern, stopped reflexively touching the marks left on him with the tips of his fingers, bringing his hand up and across his body all the time. It wasn’t as anyone who knew them even a little thought twice about the dark bruises appearing on the Commander’s skin anymore. All of the Survey Corps learned to accept it. And while first some may even cracked a joke about them (Hange and Mike), some attentive and familiar enough learned as they watched the pair over the years, through missions and times of fleeting peace, how they weren’t about sexuality or about showing off territory. They were a source of comfort as they were a reminder of life.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing useless things on Tumblr under Sithiere.   
> Any kind of feedback is appreciated! \o/


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